How Philosophers Saved Myths: Allegorical Interpretation and Classical Mythology
Luc Brisson
Abstract
This study explains how the myths of Greece and Rome were transmitted from antiquity to the Renaissance. The book argues that philosophy was ironically responsible for saving myth from historical annihilation. Although philosophy was initially critical of myth because it could not be declared true or false and because it was inferior to argumentation, mythology was progressively reincorporated into philosophy through allegorical exegesis. The book shows to what degree allegory was employed among philosophers and how it enabled myth to take on a number of different interpretive systems througho ... More
This study explains how the myths of Greece and Rome were transmitted from antiquity to the Renaissance. The book argues that philosophy was ironically responsible for saving myth from historical annihilation. Although philosophy was initially critical of myth because it could not be declared true or false and because it was inferior to argumentation, mythology was progressively reincorporated into philosophy through allegorical exegesis. The book shows to what degree allegory was employed among philosophers and how it enabled myth to take on a number of different interpretive systems throughout the centuries: moral, physical, psychological, political, and even metaphysical. This book also describes how, during the first years of the modern era, allegory followed a more religious path, which was to assume a larger role in Neoplatonism. Ultimately, the book explains how this embrace of myth was carried forward by Byzantine thinkers and artists throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance; after the triumph of Christianity, the book argues, myths no longer had to agree with just history and philosophy but the dogmas of the Church as well.
Keywords:
myth,
antiquity,
Greece,
Rome,
allegory,
Neoplatonism,
Middle Ages,
Renaissance,
Christianity
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2004 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780226075358 |
| Published to Chicago Scholarship Online: March 2013 |
DOI:10.7208/chicago/9780226075389.001.0001 |
